Mirror Neurons and Zhan Zhuang

April 11th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Just had breakfast and am trying to catch up on the report. Didn’t get around to commenting on the first paper I heard yesterday on Mirror Neurons and Zhan Zhuang (excuse previous mis-spelling). Zhan Zhuang, or ’standing like a tree’ is a Chinese meditation practice associated with qigong and tai chi, (and therefore is based on principles which have no scientific credibility). The basic idea of the paper seemed to be that:

1. Zhan Zhuang is good for you because it organises proprioception
2. Organised proprioception facilitates sensory integration
3. Sensory integration is a good thing (for reasons that were not immediately clear)

There wasn’t actually anything said about mirror neurons at all because the speaker ran out of time. (The chap from Calcutta that I met at the opening was particularly agitated about this). I’ll try and grab the presenter later and ask him what the connection was.

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Presence and Coherence

April 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

From my notes:

Presence is a function of coherence. To be present is to maximally engaged in the specific activity to hand and to refrain from engaging in other, possibly conflicting activities.

Non-conscious bodily activity is structured through the organisation of the proprioceptive sense, which allows for effective behaviour to be carried out holistically and appropriate to the demands of the particular environment. So, for example, the proprioceptive organisation which allows an effective swimming stroke to be executed (unconsciously and holistically) is different to that which allows for effective sprinting.

I can’t remember which panel this paper was part of, but it seems to link to the paper on Zhan Zhuang I reported on earlier.

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Attention Physics

June 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Attracting attention is a physical response to an environmental or social situation. In certain situations it is necessary, if not evolutionarily adaptive, to be able to call attention to oneself; when drowning for example, or in an attempt to attract a sexual partner or advertise one’s prowess in a particular field. Whilst this might obviously entail gross motor actions in a deliberate attempt to attract attention (shouting, broad movements etc), it is inevitable that other, more subtle, behaviours also exist for the management of attention. These behaviours include such minimal and largely unconscious proprioceptive actions as eye gaze direction, length of pauses in speech, syncopation of physical and vocal patterns, etc. Given that such fine-grained behaviour is usually beyond the reach of conscious control, it is likely that these are better controlled through the adopting of an overall mental ‘attitude’, and using this attitude or mindset to organise proprioception. The succesful organisation of proprioception around an attitude of attractiveness results in the physical manifestation of ‘presence’.

In order to develop the ability to attract attention in this way, and to develop presence, it may be necessary to learn techniques for the subtle orientation of the physical body such that the necessary attitude is produced. It is likely that such techniques would take the form of holistic exercises intended to allow the embodiment of such an attitude and its realization through the control mechanisms of the proprioceptive senses.

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The Kinesiology of Intuitive Listening

June 28th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Acts of organised intuition, such as are routinely attributed to such practices as psychotherapy and counselling, as well as creative practice and problem solving, routinely contain a phase referred to as ‘listening’ (1). This use of an embodied metaphor to describe an abstract concept, in this case the physical sense of listening standing in for the mental state of intuitive ’sensing’, is in line with the conceptual metaphor theories of Lakoff, Johnson and others. The cognitive concept of listening provides the image schema which structures the concept.

The close relationship between the physical schemata of the body and the image schemata which structure cognition suggests that the functioning of these metaphorical organs can be enhanced by engaging the body in specific behaviours. Intuitive listening, for example, can be enhanced by paying attention to the kinesiological or proprioceptive accompaniments to the act of normal auditory listening. Typically, active auditory listening is accompanied by specific postural and somatic realignments; eye gaze direction, head tilt, breath control, etc. Adopting these postures, either physically or imaginatively with the metaphorical body, can enhance or facilitate intuitive listening.

Petitmengin-Peugeot, C. (1999). “The Intuitive Experience.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6(2-3): 43-77.

Posted in Hearing, Intuition, Johnson, Mark, Lakoff, George, Metaphor, Petitmengin-Peugeot, C., Proprioception, Schema | No Comments »

The Emotional Reality of Phantom Limbs

October 5th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Non-conscious process utilise models of ‘being in the world’ that are different to the consciously arrived at models articulated by consciousness. An obvious example of this disparity is the case of phantom limbs, in which individuals who have lost an arm or leg (or in some cases who have been born without a limb) still experience the presence of the missing body part. The sense of the existence of the limb is so compelling that such people will, for example, avoid bumping the limb when passing through a doorway, even though they are fully aware that the limb is not there and there is no possibility of bumping it. The existence of the limb is ‘felt’ and emotionally responded to, even though the rational conscious mind is providing irrefutable evidence that the limb is not there. The compelling nature of this illusion, and the fact that this compulsion is so strong that it can significantly influence action, comes from its origins in non-conscious processes. The body image, the shape of the amputee’s ‘being in the world’ contains this limb and informs the behaviour of the person emotionally. For the person passing through the doorway, although it may be obvious that there is no real danger of bumping the phantom limb, to not take evasive action would not ‘feel’ right.

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Felt Knowledge

October 25th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Different forms of knowing correspond to different sensory modes: Objective ‘3rd person’ knowledge is associated with sight, whereas subjective ‘1st person’ knowledge is associated with touch and ‘feelings’. Knowledge that we regard as distinct from our selves and not part of our consciousness or being is metaphorically placed external to our bodies where it can be viewed dispassionately. Other knowledge, which we might regard as more ‘intimate’, is held close to the body where it is felt and embraced. This latter kind of ‘felt knowledge’ is not dissociated from one’s self and is experienced as a part of our being, a part of our ’subjectivity’. This difference in how knowledge is imagined, as distant and distinct or as upclose and personal, has implications for the use of imagery and the imagination in performance optimisation. Exercises which use the imagination to affect change in mental states often work better if the imagery used in not visual, but draws on one of the other senses, particularly the tactile and kinaesthetic. These latter forms of imagery do not objectify one’s experience and suggest a distinction between experience and experiencer, which visual imagery inevitable does.

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Felt Knowledge (Exercise)

October 26th, 2006 Fred McVittie

1. Shift the location of sensory awareness to different points in the body; feel oneself inside the foot, the chest, the arm, the head.
2. Distribute sensory awarness across two or more locations in the body and try to feel oneself balanced between those areas.
3. Feel sensory awareness moving through the space of the body.
4. Vary the scale of sensory awareness in the body, from a point to the entirety of the space occupied by the body.
5. Feel sensory awareness extending beyond the space of the body, into the space surrounding the body.
6. Vary the scale of sensory awareness of space outside of the body, from a point to the entirety of space outside of the body.
7. Feel sensory awareness of the space both inside and outside the body, the space permeates the inside and the outside of the body. Feel the entirety of space.

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Presence and Proprioception

November 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The number and complexity of the detailed physical nuances which must be adjusted to improve ‘presence’ is such that this adjustment cannot (usually) be made through the conscious training of each individual nuance. Instead, this adjustment is best carried out by using the more holistic method of the adopting of appropriate body images or physical schemas. As an analogy, one way of learning the correct position of the hands and arms for downhill skiing is to imagine oneself carrying a tray of drinks. This holistic image, when activated in the imagination, organises the proprioception of the hands and arms such that they adopt the correct configuration. Similarly, learning to dance the ‘twist’ (certainly when I was at school in the 1960’s) involved imagining drying one’s back with a towel whilst simultaneously grinding out a cigarette butt under the ball of one’s foot. This combination of physical schema produce a gestalt movement which corresponds to the required dance move. The adjustment of behaviour which produces the peculiar dance of ‘presence’ is most effectively and economically produced by a similar activation of an imagined image; an image which organises the proprioception of the body such that the many subtle detailed actions of the body produce the effect of ‘presence’.

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Non-duality and Sensory Knowledge

November 11th, 2006 Fred McVittie

In order to achieve the state of being known as ‘non-duality’, a consilience of self and world in which the separation between these is collapsed, one first needs to reduce this (apparent) separation by ‘bringing the world closer’. This can be achieved by de-privileging our habitual and dominant visual way of knowing, in which the entities of the world are viewed from a distant, removed position, in favour of ways of knowing based on more proximal sensory modes; hearing, smell, taste, touch, proprioception.

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Proprioceptive Knowing

December 3rd, 2006 Fred McVittie

The various sensory modes which make up the human sensorium; sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell; map onto a set of knowledge types which range from the most ‘objective’ knowledge to the most ’subjective’. So, for example, we use the faculty of sight to refer to knowledge which we regard as objective, placing the knowledge at a remove from our bodies in the (metaphorical ) interpersonal space of shared experience. At the other extreme we use the faculty of touch to refer to knowledge which we do not regard as objective. We talk of the objects of such knowledge in terms of how we ‘feel’ about them, collapsing the metaphorical space and assuming a personal contact in which we might even say we are ‘touched’. In addition to the senses already referred to however, there is also the additional sensory mode of proprioception; the schematic sense of our own bodies in space and the relations between the parts. The type of abstract knowledge which maps from this sense is likely to be different from the objective and subjective types noted above, and is likely to be concerned with such embodied kineaesthetic operations as balance, relation, centre, location, weight, etc.

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Gist and the Organisation of Proprioception

December 28th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Non-conscious schema, or physical ‘gists’, display themselves as organised proprioceptive sets which inflect behaviour. Performance may be enhanced by the adopting of such a physical gist when this gist organises the proprioception in ways which correspond to the required goals of the performance. This organisation is likely to operate across a large number of different variables and to make detailed alteration to actions.

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Effects of Multiple Schema in Performance

January 13th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘gist’ or schema associated (possibly metaphorically) with a physical behaviour organises the proprioception involved in the carrying out of that behaviour, particularly taking care of the details. Sometimes different schema can be mobilised simultaneously, as when we are required to perform two tasks at once, or when we conceive (consciously or unconsciously) of a single task as being composed of two other tasks, (as for example when we learn to dance ‘the twist’ be imagining drying our back with a towel whilst grinding out a cigarette end under a foot). It is likely that, in addition to such potentially useful or complementary schema, there are also occasions when competing or conflicting schema are operating simultaneously, which would negatively affect the carrying out of the desired action. This may be evidenced in theatrical performance contexts when a nervous actor may be operating a ‘hide’ schema alongside other behaviours.

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